most people in the Navy since the 1930's to at least the 90s remember the life vests were called Kapoks... I just found out why. (history post, and PSA, nothing to do with vehicles... it's just a PSA)

Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the fill for most life preservers and flight vests came from the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies, harvested from the pods of the ceiba tree. A cotton-like fiber called kapok also was water resistant and buoyant, but the Japanese captured Java soon after Pearl Harbor, cutting off the supply.

The "Kapok" life preserver vests sere used by the Navy and Marine corps during WWII, and were in many ways easier to use than the "Mae West" type, as they did not require inflation and were easier to secure. This type of preserver was intended more for "General" use

 Tests by the U.S Navy had found 1 pound of milkweed fluff was as warm as wool, but six times as light, and it was six times as buoyant as cork. 

A pound of milkweed fluff could keep a 150-pound man afloat for more than 40 hours.

Gathering milkweed was not just a public relations, feel-good project to involve children in the war effort. It was an essential part of winning the war.

The country urgently needed the silky floss as fill for life preservers and flight vests.

During the war, children collected enough milkweed fluff to fill more than 1.2 million life vests for America’s fighting men and women, saving thousands of lives. Children searched the countryside in 25 U.S. states, as well as in Canada’s Ontario and Quebec, to gather milkweed pods in 1942, ’43 and ’44

In 1942 the government declared milkweed a “wartime strategic material” and set up a processing plant in Petoskey, Mich., and the call went out across the United States to gather wild milkweed. Boy Scouts, school children and even the Roman Catholic nuns at Holy Cross School answered the call.

Ralph Siegler, now 81, didn’t find out the significance of World War II milkweed collection until this June when he overheard a Carnegie Shade Tree Commission member mentioned how milkweed helped saved the lives of American servicemen during World War II, triggering his boyhood memory of collecting milkweed with his brother Clyde.

The free milkweed plants are being giving away as part of the Mayors Monarch Pledge, an effort by mayors in the United States, Canada and Mexico to restore habit for the monarch butterfly.

For 33 years, Ralph was the cameraman for the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”. “I did a little bit of everything, lighting, editing and camera work,” he said. “I was there from the first day until the last day of the show.

His brother Clyde, meanwhile, had a 40-year career at US Airways, where he worked as an airplane maintenance inspector.

Both men, now in their 80s, love to spend time outdoors, harkening back to their days growing up in West Virginia

Every year both men grow milkweed to help save monarch butterflies. Monarchs were recently placed on the endangered list by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

https://www.post-gazette.com/life/goodness/2022/10/14/picked-milkweed-world-war-ll-flyers-now-they-grow-monarch-butterflies-clyde-seigler-farm/stories/202209020099

https://www.ima-usa.com/products/original-u-s-wwii-united-states-navy-kapok-life-jacket-as-used-by-landing-craft-operators-during-d-day-rare?variant=39746351300677